To Live Fully, One Must Die Daily

Seneca said every night before bed, we should tell ourselves that our lives have ended and we have come back to life. Everything is extra. This is all bonus time.

I very much agree with it. We have done everything that we wanted in our past lives. And this is an added bonus. Because it is. There’s no regret. No could-haves. No would-haves.

The past and the future are ephemeral concepts that are tantamount to the chasing of butterflies. It seems we are getting close to catching the elusive, like a serpent in its futile attempt to swallow its own tail.

So Marcus Aurelius is right, we should never let the future disturb us. We will meet it, if we have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm us against the present.

We shouldn't but we do somehow. We do because we care. And in the process of caring about the uncertain, we lose control of the certain.

To gain back control, we need strength, derived from one’s tranquillity because the nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength. The demise of boyhood can only transform into manhood like a phoenix rising from death if and only if he burns with his own wings.